Theresa Storzieri, part of the supporting cast of Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, has spent a decade living in her van.
She is one of the original eight nomads who started the Rubber Tramp Rendezvous, which is a yearly event where fellow van-dwellers meet in the American desert to have bonfires and share life experiences. It’s now attended by thousands. This was significantly featured in Nomadland, which stars Frances McDormand.
Theresa Storzieri’s former partner, Bob Wells, is perhaps the best-known advocate of the nomadic van-dweller lifestyle in the world. She also has a YouTube channel, with over a million views, where she goes by the name Ma Terry and shares advice on nomadic living.
When I meet her, she’s wearing a Stetson hat and the felt boards hanging from the wall behind her are covered with earrings (which she makes herself).
The Indiependent: Why did you embrace nomad living?
Theresa Storzieri: I was paying $900 a month for rent in California. My apartment went from $900 to $1,400 a month, two years ago it was $2,000 a month and now it’s $2,400 a month. I can’t keep up with those prices. Once I got to the East Coast it was like, this is pretty cool! I have some freedom here, but I’ll tell ya, it took me about a year to really figure it out. I was like I can either have stuff and live in an apartment or I can have experiences, and I’d much rather have the experiences.
Nomads are good people. We should be seen as we are. We have the whole media against us showing us what normal is, but that’s not normal to me. With my traumatic brain injury, I can’t go to college and be a doctor. I get free college, I would love to be a doctor but I can’t because memory challenges are there. To me, being housed is like putting a bird back in its cage.
Most nomads don’t start off with a road map for this life. Many fall into the lifestyle through loss. How did you teach yourself all the skills you needed for this lifestyle?
It was pick one thing a day. What can I do today to improve my life. That’s all I had to do. It may be how to pay my bills online. Ten years ago when I started, I had a little butane stove in my van. It took me over a year before I actually turned it on and got into the idea that I could have hot food in my van. I was so sure I would blow myself up, or I would suffocate in my van. Now, I meet people in Quartzsite and they’ll be struggling and I teach them how to do it.
What does freedom mean to you?
Freedom can be a lonely place, but freedom means I can wake up in the morning and anything I want to do I can do it. You would need one hundred lifetimes to see all of what America has.
Stealth camping is a big part of nomad life. Explain what that is.
We are not allowed to sleep in our vehicles on city streets. What I do is find a cluster of apartment complexes. Pull in about 10pm at night, be very quiet, turn off my engine, give it a minute, jump in the back of my van and sleep. Get up at 6am in the morning, make sure the coast is clear, jump in the front of my van and leave.
You’ve said in a YouTube video that a life’s dream of yours was to be in a movie. After surviving domestic abuse, leaving your town with nothing and finding nomad life at your lowest point, it leads to becoming a part of Nomadland, which wins three Oscars. Talk about that.
I have always been in someone else’s shadow. Eighteen years of my life I had to listen to my dad call me a little dummy. I left my second husband after twenty-six years of cruelty. I lived through fifty years of abuse and everyone kept telling me I’m nobody and it’s like, well if I’m such a nobody, my name is on the screen credits of Nomadland and it says I’m an American-born actress and I love it! Finally I achieve something worthwhile in my life.
What did you think of the movie?
It gave us legitimacy. We’re still looked down on in this country as homeless people, but I can at least point to Nomadland. Some people come out of the movie feeling sad, you know Fern breaks up with David. That’s about how I broke up with Bob. I just said ‘Goodbye Bob I’m leaving the desert!’ To me that was happy because she found herself. She could make her own rules. She didn’t have to define herself by her partner. For a lot of people my age, we were taught to be a homemaker: we took sewing, we took cooking. We weren’t allowed to take men things. I kind of like the 2020’s for women.
What’s changed since Nomadland?
I changed. People would say – where do you live? I’d say: oh, I live in Redlands. Now people ask me and I say: see that mini-van over there – that’s my van. I live in it. Got any questions? It’s because now I come from a sense of pride and a lot of it is because of Nomadland. When I go to Bullhead City in Arizona, everyone at the dog park knows: that’s my van, I live in it, I travel in it, and I’m having a great life.
Words by Jake Walker-Charles
This interview has been edited slightly for clarity and concision
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